News and Links for May 2020 With Minimal Depressing Content

It Might Be May

Because 2020 just couldn't help itself the big topic for May (besides the ongoing concern of COVID-19) is what folk casually refer to as, "Murder Hornets. Let's try to avoid how much horrifically depressing stuff is going on and instead enjoy some fun bits of news and links, sound good?

Read These Things (or Don't, Whatever You Like)

Comic publisher Northwest Press is going to help people celebrate pride this June by mailing-out, "Pride Postcards," with all kinds of awesome artwork by creators. You can give the Kickstarter campaign for it a gander here.

Samii and I found Netflix's show, "Too Hot to Handle," to be dumb fun. I'm all for a, "Virtual reunion,' episode whilst waiting for a new season to be possible in a hopefully post-pandemic world.

Two video-game companies, THQ Nordic and Koch Media, traded some of their IPs to one another, with this news catching my eye as one IP was, "Red Faction," which had some awesome and miserable games. I am curious if this shuffling of rights between companies indicates plans for anything to be rebooted. Dare I assume we will get a new X-rated rip-off of, "The Sims," in the form of, "Singles: Flirt Up Your Life?"

I was a big fan of the first American Genre Film Archive's, "Mystery Mixtape," they released for just 99 cents (or you could donate more). They did a second one and now a third just came out too. I'd recommend giving them all a viewing!

I quite liked the comic, "Wyrd," and considered it one of the funniest reads of 2019. Comicsbeat just posted an interview with the book's artist, Antonio Fuso, and he mentions there will be more news on, "Wyrd,' in the future, so that excites me!

This article reviewing the early access/still-in-development game, "Lumberjack Dynstasy," makes taking down trees sound a lot more full of intrigue and mystery than you might assume.

Birdcage Bottom Books puts out some stellar indie titles and currently has a 50% off sale going for a number of their anthology books as long as you use the code HALFANTHOLOGIES at check-out to buy such awesome reads as, "Bottoms Up!" "Cringe," and, "Digestate."

In interesting news, long-running drama-thriller, "The Blacklist," is going to air its half-filmed season finale by doing the scenes that weren't complete in an animated graphic-novel style. That sounds snazzy and immediately makes me think of the classic, "Max Payne," games.

Quibi has had a rough time lately. Besides new episodes of the stellar, "Reno 911!" it has minimal interesting content, allegedly was taking privacy data to sell it shouldn't have (while claiming it was a glitch) and now Quibi is being sued for possibly ripping-off its, "Turnstyle," tech from another company. I've been fascinated by the service as something that had some clever ideas but seems to have botched almost everything since launch. At this rate, I doubt Qubi will exist by next year.

Enjoy the (Hopefully) Good Weather Responsibly!

I hope you enjoyed all or some of the bits of information I provided today. If the weather is nice where you are, go out and enjoy it, but make sure to still practice social distancing and otherwise be safe.

The Video-Game Company That Gave Legitimacy to a Website Full of Hate Speech and Child Pornography

Suppose you are a video-game company and want to get some press for your upcoming game? Perhaps to do so you decide to engage with fans. Maybe you do an AMA (ask me anything) segment on Reddit, or request tweets from folk. You know what you should not do, however? You should not do a Q&A on a website known for being so vile that even Google won't link to it due to the numerous times it was accused of having pornographic images of minors, not to mention its reputation as being a bastion of hate-speech for folk who hate black people, Jews, foreign folk, etc. Yes, I am talking about the cesspool of the internet, 8Chan, and how a video-game company known as THQ Nordic inadvertently gave it an air of legitimacy and now looks really stupid for doing this.

Now, people maybe have heard of 4Chan, an image board-website of sorts that is known for often having unpleasant people on it--think Comicsgate, Gamergate, Neo-Nazis, Homophobes, Xenophobes, so-called Men's Rights Activists, and so forth. Now, 4Chan is regarded as being pretty toxic and miserable, but imagine if there were people so terrible and awful that even 4Chan disliked them and banned them, basically the worst of the absolute worst. Well, those people went and created 8Chan.

8Chan apparently now at least tries to be vigilant about getting rid of anyone posting outright child porn as they don't want to be arrested or shut-down. Besides that however, anything goes. Written stuff that is full of hate, drawings of popular children's show characters who by no means are adults put into all sorts of grossly sexual situations (which is borderline in terms of legality), ranting and raving about SJWs, liberals, and so forth, it is a terrible place with no redeeming aspects. This isn't like Reddit which has some awesome communities and some atrocious ones, this is a case where if 4Chan were the dumpster of the internet, 8Chan is the stuff that was too disgusting to even be in that dumpster so it was moved into a nuclear waste site...that also caught fire. Then a video-game company trying to promote its upcoming game, "Darksiders III," dove-into this toxic sludge. The AMA went about as well as expected, full of hate-speech and questionable imagery, much to the surprise of nobody who knows anything about 8Chan.

One comment for THQ Nordic was about the poster wanting more, "Big tiddie lolis," in games.

Why did THQ Nordic have a P.R. person willingly go on 8Chan to promote their game? Apparently, "The opportunity was here and we took it." They were approached by 8Chan and instead of doing some due diligence said, "Sure, why not?" or maybe even realized the site was controversial to some degree (without full knowledge of how bad things are there) and figured doing a bit on there could get more press--not realizing just how disgusting 8Chan is. I imagine the P.R. person who was in charge of this, Philipp Brock, is praying to not get fired, with he and THQ Nordic having now engaged in extensive damage control. Although honestly, you never want your company in a position where they have to release a statement about how despite the way things look they are opposed to child porn and white supremacy. This is one big piece of shit-cake, and THQ Nordic eagerly baked it.